Portuguese verbal regency – Regency of a few verbs in Portuguese and crase

Portuguese verbal regency – Regency of a few verbs in Portuguese and a little bit about “crase”.

Portuguese verbal regency – Regency of a few verbs in Portuguese and a little bit about “crase”

Hello there and welcome to our Portuguese Basic Tips about Portuguese verbal regency!

On today’s episode, we are going to speak about Portuguese verbal regency, the regency of a few verbs in Portuguese. When we speak about “regência” in Portuguese, we mean there are some words that require complements; still we have other expressions that don’t require them. We mostly use prepositions to do that.

See: in this case, we used the preposition “a”, since the verb “ir” requires this complement. “Ao” is the junction of the preposition “a” and the article “o” in Portuguese. That explains, somehow, why we use “crase” in Portuguese. I mean, if we are referring to a feminine noun and the verb requires a preposition, we need to put both “the article” and “the preposition” altogether. So we have two “a” letters in the sentence. Instead of write it down on the paper, we just “flag it”, by using “crase”.

See that: Eu fui à escola. (I went to the school).

My pronunciation is the same here. However, if you are reading this text, you can see we have a little difference in the written sentence: the letter “a” is flagged, as if I was saying “hey, I have two letters here. Don’t forget it”.

Ok, let’s get back to the regency in Portuguese. Let’s speak about the main verbs you need to be aware of.

Precisar de / Necessitar de (To need)

We always use the preposition “de” in these verbs.

Eu preciso de algo / Eu necessito de algo (I need something)

Note that in English we don’t need to complement the verb in those cases. So you need to remember you need to do that in Portuguese.

Obedecer a / To obey

This verb also requires the preposition “a” in the sentences. I’m saying it because in an informal kind of Portuguese, we, Brazilians, don’t usually pronounce it.

See, the correct way of pronunciation is:

Eu obedeço a meus pais / I obey my parentes

However, you may sometimes hear “eu obedeço meus pais” instead of “eu obedeço aos meus pais” – with no preposition in the sentence.

Aspirar or Aspirar a / Aspirate

I’ll speak about this verb in order to emphasize the importance of using, the importance of knowing about regency in Portuguese. If we use it with no preposition we mean something, but if we add a simple letter to the sentence we have its meaning completely changed.

See that:

Eu aspirei toda a casa hoje (I vacuumed the whole house today).

Eu aspirei o cheiro das rosas (I breathed in the smell of the roses)

In those cases, we are not using the preposition in the sentence, so the meaning of “aspirar” here is the same as “to breathe”. We also use it when we are “aspirating” the house, vacuuming the house, as we said in the first example.

Now, pay attention to our second example:

Eu aspiro a um novo cargo na empresa. (I aspire to a new position in the company / I want a new position in the company).

Here we have a new case: when we use the verb “aspirar” accompanied by the preposition “a”, we mean we “want something” so much. Did you see the meaning of the verb was completely changed?

This kind of thing happens all the time in Portuguese, so I’ll split this podcast in two parts, so you can memorize it as you need, step by step.